A new documentary detailing the rise of the popular tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons is officially in the works at Hasbro’s Entertainment One. Joe Manganiello, a Dungeon & Dragons writer and official brand ambassador for Hasbro, has stepped on board the project as a director alongside Kyle Newman.
Dungeons & Dragons was first created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974 and first published by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. before being picked up by Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast in 1997, where it remains to this day with new game material being released frequently. Dungeons & Dragons is an interactive tabletop game where one person, known as the Dungeon Master or DM, oversees a group of players as they guide their created characters through a series of adventures known as a campaign. The adventures usually take place in a fantasy setting full of warriors, wizards, and crafty thieves, but Wizards of the Coast has published some Dungeons & Dragons material that allows players to adventure in other genres.
Dungeons & Dragons hasn’t always been a hugely popular game, especially after the “Satanic Panic” that swept through America in the 1980s and 90s, but in recent years the game has seen a massive uptick in popularity thanks to D&D-themed videogames and popular livestreaming channels on Twitch and YouTube, like Critical Role and Dimension 20, among others.
Behind the Scenes of Hasbro’s ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Documentary
According to Deadline, the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ documentary produced by Hasbro’s Entertainment One, or eOne, will contain “over 400 hours of archived, never-before-seen footage going back to the game’s creation in the early 1970s” in addition to interviews with celebrity fans of the game and an inside look at some “confidential developments” of the game at Wizards of the Coast.
News of the D&D documentary comes just as eOne and Paramount are getting ready to release Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a movie adaptation of the game starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, Hugh Grant, and Jason Wong. The film is slated to release on March 3rd, and all signs point to the film and the upcoming documentary being unrelated projects. The documentary is currently slated to be released in 2024, just in time for the game’s 50th anniversary.
Regarding the documentary, Wizards of the Coast President Cynthia Williams told Yahoo! News:
The currently unnamed Dungeons & Dragons documentary will be produced by Joe Manganiello, his brother Nick Manganiello, Anthony Savini, and Cecily Tyler. Tara Long and Geno McDermott will act as executive producers for Hasbro’s eOne, along with Kyle Newman, Adam F. Goldberg, and Dungeons & Dragons expert Jon Peterson. The documentary is slated for release sometime in 2024.
